CharlesDarwin
@CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
- Submitted 1 week ago to support@lemmy.world | 2 comments
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
LOL, we had some gathering at our house a while ago and it was a mix of Gen Y and Gen X and the concept of a “party line” came up. Some of us Gen Xers knew of it (I distinctly remember we had one with several neighbors - possibly 3 others?) and had to explain the concept. Basically, if you lived in a rural area and are old enough, you likely had no other choice. (Just searched, and it apparently was finally phased out by the late 90s.)
I experienced it as a young kid for several years and it still boggles my mind. We had a bored elderly neighbor who seemed to have the hobby of hogging the line a lot and picking up and listening when others were making calls. I remember many times where my mom had to tell her to hang up the line because she had to make an important call.
The fear of making a non-local call was an ever-present concern for sure. I remember my mom quizzing me over and over if a new girlfriend I had was a local call, since she lived about 20 minutes away and it was another prefix, but same area code.
Also, you had to basically rent your phone and the choices of that hardware were rather limited…but built like a tank. Ma Bell and the baby bells had a lot of control.
People have a tendency to sometimes “freeze” their experiences and I could see how someone might really not understand how long distance is not really a thing.
I often wonder how people might cope if something like electricity/power went through something similar - where the abundance of solar and/or wind power backed by batteries and other improvements drove the cost down to such a point that younger generations will wonder why anyone ever rode the thermostat or agonized over leaving on lights…
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
That’s a good one for sure. I would submit that Repo Man is an overlooked gem that may have done one of the best jobs in capturing the zeitgeist of its time into one movie. Disaffected youth, working McJobs? Repo Man has got you.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9k09WPpNeo
It also was skewering boomers back in 1984…
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
LOL, right? Have any of these people even met Gen X or watched some of the media aimed at Gen X?
It’s not like we invented disaffected youth, but it’s like plenty of music and movies captured that and made it an aesthetic for us. I recommend anyone thinking otherwise watch something like Repo Man.
I’m sure plenty of boomers in their youth had some of the same fuck you attitudes. They were the people that said “don’t trust anyone over 30” and “hope I die before I get old”?
Does anyone really think they were super bubbly in their teens and twenties while carrying out McJobs for The Man?
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
Also, hearing people talk about spending is wild. Especially when it comes to things like toast, Netflix subs, smart phones, and televisions.
- Avocado toast. Okay, discretionary spending is something everyone needs to keep an eye on, sure. But I don’t think toast is why people are finding things unaffordable for things like housing, health care, transportation, etc…
- Netflix subscription is as low as something like $108/ year. Not even worth talking about.
- Smart phones are not really optional in today’s society. People that pretend that they are cannot even be serious. Also, you’ll see boomers glued to their fucking phones, too, so it’s not like “constantly scrolling” is some exclusive trait of {generation younger than mine}.
- Televisions. This is the one that seems to unhinged to me. Adjusted for inflation, TVs have never been cheaper, especially per square inch. Consider that the first color TVs were 12 inches in size and apparently $12,000+ in 2026 dollars. I think people that have their mind frozen on those kinds of economics are the ones talking about it. Suppose you had the room for it and splurged just a bit, and got a mid-range 85 inch television. That’s still $1000-$1600, and a one-time cost (well, not counting the electricity). That is not going to be the difference between a down payment on a house or not.
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
Haha. Someone mentioned The Graduate in the comments on the article itself, too.
I’m sure there are lots of examples from earlier TV shows and movies…
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
Yup. That’s why I put this article in mild infuriating. It’s not all the way to enraging, but it’s low-level bullshit that you see all the time in these kinds of think pieces.
I’ve been seeing narratives much like this about Gen X when I was the target, then Gen Y, now Gen Z. And Adam Conover has a talk where he shows this kind of thing was aimed at boomers, too.
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
Yup, this. However, reading/watching something from the past 100 years does tend to bring it home in a more visceral way. People having a hard time connecting with the experiences of people that are still living (boomers, Silent generation) are going to really struggle connecting to ancient Sumerians.
Adam Conover has the perfect talk on the notion of “generations”…I honestly wish he’d expand on this talk and put together instances in a slide deck where he goes from Gen Z (or alpha) and these kinds of narratives all the way back to colonial times or whatever he has the energy for.
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
I think at some point, someone noticed there was a bit of markup on it when eating at restaurants, associated Gen Y with it, and then the narrative took off from there?
It reminds me of the same finger-wagging that seemed to be aimed at probably Gen X in the 90s over things like lattes. If people at that time and at that age were struggling financially, it was not because of the occasional latte.
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
Oh if we are talking about service workers, I’ve seen the bored vacant stare from people in a McJob since before I even entered the workforce. I noticed it as an observant child watching adolescents in such positions, and those kids were probably Generation Jones or maybe younger boomers.
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
Also, didn’t the protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye complain a lot about others being fake and so on?
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
LOL, Gen X here. We saw a lot of that kind hand-wringing about how we were a “slacker generation” that was not taking up ad campaigns in expected ways and/or playing video games too much and not being career-minded enough, etc. and how we thought there was “no future” because of things like the Cold War and nuclear annihilation, kids of broken homes and latchkey kids, homes needing to have two incomes to get by, and the dystopian movies we grew up on.
Then they mostly skipped over us because Gen X is not as large of a group as Gen Y.
That’s why when I see articles like this about Gen Y/Z/A, I just lauuuuuugh. It’s all so very unimaginative, but the people writing these galaxy-brained things seemingly have no fucking idea how recycled it all is.
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
I’d like to point that “expert” to watch something like The Graduate or read something like “Generation X” - or other novels from Coupland - where his characters agonize over things like McJobs. Ironically, I think Coupland is probably describing what is often called “The Jones Generation”.
The Graduate was before I was born, and Coupland’s work was not something I read until a few years out of college, but both managed to resonate with me.
- Comment on How to respond to the ‘Gen Z stare’ without looking like a total boomer | CNN 2 weeks ago:
Who the hell even writes articles like this? 🤣
Do people really think that people born between certain years invented…staring?
Seriously, you could change the dates on an article like this, make it about Gen X or Gen Y, and it would be the same thing. Or about boomers. Or fast forward a bit and it will be articles like this about Gen Alpha.
“The older people just don’t understand the ways of the younger people. It’s like this is a completely novel thing between these two generations.”
😒
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world | 56 comments
- Comment on We all forget that for a time they were out of style. This 1940 magazine proudly announced that they were back 8 months ago:
I have to laugh when I see similar pronouncements now, usually with a reference to Sidney Sweeney and how she is a signifier of boobs being back on the scene as popular. LOL, when weren’t they popular? I remember talking about this just last summer with someone I know and asking about Sweeney - are you telling me there was a time when a beautiful blonde with a great body and a huge chest was going to have a hard time in Hollywood because of those traits? Like someone casting parts was going to be like, “sorry, we’d hire you if you get a breast reduction and gained a lot more weight, because boobs are out and being fat is in”.
The rightwing chuds were all celebrating her as if it was only flat, unattractive and morbidly obese people on the screen just prior? What universe are they even living in?
Also: I’d love to know when or if any heterosexual men were consulted on whether boobs were “in style” or not. I cannot imagine any man that consulted his calendar or with some fashionistas as to whether they were “in style”. 🤣
I have a feeling such pronouncements are being made by groups that are not heterosexual men?
- Comment on [deleted] 11 months ago:
Some companies cut employees as a basic threat and the implication is that others pick up the slack.
- Comment on Ok, boomer 1 year ago:
PS The only derogatory I can say about the young generation as a whole is, where the fuck is your rock and roll? You’re listening to your grandparent’s music. Lame.
I think about this all the time, actually. I think part of it is that music is so atomized into a zillion sub-genres, and there doesn’t seem to be really big zeitgeist-level types of things. Streaming vs. curating has changed the dynamics back to being more similar to what the boomers started off with, ironically, when they were buying 45’s, and before albums became a thing. :)
Anyway, the things that make the really big $$$ all seem rather nutless and uninspiring, if you ask me. Where is the music that might scare the parents?
But then, if you look back at what was charting in a given decade, you might be surprised at how schmaltzy things were way back, too. Look at the Seventies, as a for instance, and see what the top 40 was playing.
- Comment on Ok, boomer 1 year ago:
In Canada it wasn’t until 1964 that a woman could open her own bank account without her husband’s consent.
My mother would always remind me that in the United States, this was not lifted until 1974.
- Comment on Ok, boomer 1 year ago:
Eh, this seems to be looking at things with rose-colored glasses. That generation, in the prime of their youth, had to worry about getting drafted into going halfway around the world to fight a war of empire, for instance.
- Comment on Ok, boomer 1 year ago:
Boomers expected that civilization would end before they got to adulthood.
I figured that was our (Gen X) curse. I remember being fairly sure I’d not see age 20, given all the dystopian nightmares that seemed to surround us. Maybe it was all the boomer-created media we were saturated in.
I seem to recall Douglas Coupland writing on that in much more evocative ways than I could ever muster…but then, even though he coined “Generation X”, I think he’s one of the very oldest in that generation.
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 1 year ago:
But, I think he’s at his best when he’s in a show where there’s a script and an editor. On social media and on free-form podcasts, he comes off as a know-it-all ass.
^ This. I still am miffed at his attitude in regards to considering the issues of AI on I forget which talk show, but he took the attitude of “we’d just pull the plug”.
Maybe when in a scripted format or in writing, he might be able to extrapolate a bit, but he just sounded like a layperson when it comes to the topic, and I honestly have no idea if he’s read or considered the kinds of things that, say, Nick Bostrom has put out there. It just sounded like some hot take man-on-the-street kind of response, talking about the problem as if we are talking about someone’s server running somewhere. It was just…facepalm.
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 1 year ago:
I saw Tyson take such a dismissive attitude toward the threats of something like AI, specifically, AGI/ASI with the flippant “but we’d just shut it off!” kind of thing, it really grinded my gears.
However, I guess I’m falling into the same trap that so many do - expecting this guy to be all things to every aspect of anything that smacks of “science” and that’s just not a realistic expectation. I’ll stick with him on things like the re-make/update of Cosmos and ignore his random hot takes on virtually everything else. Probably also when he’s putting pen to paper vs. the hot take kind of thing on a talk show. He seems to be a frequent guest on talk shows and I remember a few being quite cringe at times.
I seem to remember a certain kind of person (usually your local WELLAXKTUALLY guy) getting butthurt about the way Sagan was being held up (in their view) as the arbiter of science or something, repeating “he’s not a real scientist he’s just a generalist” as a constant refrain.
Fuck it, who cares. If guys like this are good at getting whole generations of people interested in science, more power to them…science could use all the PR it can get in the age of Idiocracy.
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 1 year ago:
Hm, never heard of Paris Syndrome; guess you learn something every day, thanks.
- Comment on Enshittification 1 year ago:
Uh, I still have the same question. Linking to Wikipedia doesn’t really answer the question.
- Comment on Enshittification 1 year ago:
I am sure that most of the cereals I’ve tried in recent years have changed since I was a child. Not for the better.
- Comment on Enshittification 1 year ago:
corporate America has spent the last 15 years hiring people based on their race instead of their qualifications
Wait, in what universe did that happen?
- Comment on Git good, son 1 year ago:
I always think of Kramer saying he faked orgasms, LOL. 🤣
- Comment on makes sense 2 years ago:
I so hope this is fake, because this is so stupid, even by Space Karen standards.
- Comment on I hate using mobile to read articles 3 years ago:
I wish I could vote you up 1000x for the RSS recommend. I’ve never stopped using it but only on the desktop (elfeed).